


After Sectionals

by humanbean



Category: Glee
Genre: Friendship, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-11-20
Updated: 2015-11-20
Packaged: 2018-05-02 14:43:53
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,099
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5252129
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/humanbean/pseuds/humanbean
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>6x11 reaction fic. Mostly because I nearly cried, I nearly cried when they won.</p>
            </blockquote>





	After Sectionals

            Roderick found Jane on the wheelchair entrance by the staff room, sitting on the railing with her back turned to the door and her arms wrapped around herself.

            “I’ve been looking all over for you,” he said, before she curled into herself a little more and he realised she was sobbing. He came closer, within reaching distance but he didn’t touch her. “Hey, what’s wrong?”

            “Nothing’s wrong.” She covered her face with her hands and kept sobbing. “I’m just- We worked so hard and I’m just… really glad we didn’t lose.”

            Roderick nodded. They’d been fighting since the year started, and relief crying was good for you sometimes. “Come down?” he asked, because she wasn’t anchoring herself on the railing, she was just balanced there, and a little irrational part of him was worried she’d lose her balance.

            She nodded, sniffed, wiped her face on her shirt sleeve. (The trail he’d followed to find her had involved the blazer lying on one of the staff room tables. He wasn’t sure why she’d taken it off.) She turned and hopped off the rail with a grace that Roderick envied, and offered him a shaky smile.

            “You were great tonight.”

            “So were you.”

            “Please. I could have not sang at all, for all anyone noticed me.” The sudden bitterness in her voice was surprising- she’d never said anything like that before. She stared down at her shoes, and Roderick got the feeling that there were some not-relief tears prickling at her eyes. “When I transferred to McKinley, I thought…”

.           She had trailed off, and then, a moment later, she shook her head.

            “You can say it.” he prompted her.

            She leaned her head back.

            “I have a headache.”

            “It’s the hair.” Roderick replied, knowing a derailment when he heard one. “You’re not used to having it so tight.”

            “Maybe it’s the hair.” she agreed, and wiped her face with her sleeve again. She’d stopped crying a while ago, but her breath was still a little ragged and her eyes would be red for a while yet.

            Roderick started reaching over to undo the pins. He stopped, let her see his hands, let her know what he was doing, and she nodded minutely, closing her eyes.

            (Jane didn’t let just anyone touch her hair. It was her most prized possession.)

            Most people liked having their hair played with and Jane was no exception, despite her protectiveness. She had a tiny contented smile on her face that was reminiscent of a kitten being petted, and her breathing slowed a little. When he thought he’d gotten all of the pins (and there were a lot of pins), he fluffed her hair out the way she generally liked it.

            “There you go. Feel like yourself again?”

            “A little.” she admitted, without opening her eyes. “Is Mason still here?”

            “I left him in the choir room.” Roderick replied. “He was singing something with his sister.”

            “He usually is.” And the usual abstracted smile took over her face.

            “You’re doing it again.”

            She blushed. “Shut up, Roderick.”

            They were reflected in the staff room window. Jane checked her hair in the reflection, as if she didn’t trust what he’d done with it. Roderick leaned against the rail, not completely, but just a little. He’d never actually broken one of those down, but he didn’t want to risk it, especially since it would almost certainly mean Jane falling off onto the pavement. (And cracking her head open, most likely, and Roderick didn’t want to be responsible for _killing_ her.)

            “Are you still mad?” he tested. “About the Warblers, I mean. Not getting in.”

            She didn’t answer for a few seconds because she didn’t want to. “No. Not really. Not anymore.” A little line appeared between her eyebrows. “Are you?”

            “About what?” Roderick asked, the words ‘dead weight’ circling somewhere in the back of his mind. Jane’s eyes were unfocused, her features slack, and she didn’t answer.

            “You okay?”

            She started, also known as the number one sign of not being okay. Her head started nodding before she spoke, though, and she looked him in the eye for the first (No, second. The first had been when she’d smiled) time since he’d come out there.

            “Yeah… yeah. Just… thinking.” She looked back down, and then suddenly up again. “Don’t laugh?”

            The question had come seemingly out of nowhere, but her eyes were wide and earnest and serious when she looked at him.

            “I would never.”

            Her lips twitched. “I can think of at least a dozen instances off the top of my head that say differently.”

            “I would never laugh at you when you’re sad.” he amended, and she ducked her head again. She was smiling.

            “I used to have this picture in my head.” she blurted out suddenly, and when Roderick looked at her, she looked like she was the one who was startled. “A fantasy, I guess. We’re at Sectionals- the New Directions, that is, not the supergroup. It’s an old fantasy. We’re at Sectionals, and I have a solo, and when I sing, the whole auditorium is mine. I just bring the house down, you know. And I look into the audience, and I see Gabe, and he sees me, and he just thinks… ‘My God. We should have let her in.’ But it’s too late. We beat them, and we go on and they don’t, and it’s too late to say they’re sorry.”

            When Roderick didn’t reply immediately, she ducked her head again. “I know; it’s stupid.”

            “It’s not stupid.” he said. When she snorted the ‘you’re only saying that to make me feel better’ snort, he took one of her hands and squeezed it. “Since I came here, I’ve just been imagining myself becoming rich and famous purely out of spite. So that in ten years, I can come back here and say…”

            “…You were wrong.”

            Back in the early days, at the very start of the year before Mason and Madison had started hanging out with them regularly and before Kitty or Spencer had turned up in the choir room, he and Jane used to commiserate about both being losers. But she was so confident, so brave, so talented that he’d forgotten.

            “You staying out here?” he asked, standing up off the rail. She thought about it, and then she nodded.

            “I’ll be in soon.”

            “Soon. It’s cold out.” A pause, and then Roderick took off his own blazer and draped it over her. It was huge- it swallowed her up. But she clutched onto it with both hands and smiled.

            “Thanks, Rod.


End file.
